Cultural Anthropology

This article examines the complex relationships between changing forms of commodity production and consumption and changing styles of religiosity in Zabid, the Republic of Yemen. I examine a couple of prominent logics of veiling in Fin-de-Siècle Yemen: Some reformist women add "Islamic socks" and gloves to their already fully modest garb, while other women don chadors that decorate these garments with embroidery, making them into items of fashionable consumption and adornment. Other commodities, like a Chador Barbie that I found in Yemen's suq, are used to think through changing practices of consumption, adornment, and women's sociability in Zabid.